By JAIME STUDD

For the Express

BROADALBIN — For the first time its history, the Broadalbin-Perth Central School District has landed on the radar of the New York State Department of Education, but not for a good reason.

Hamilton-Fulton-Montgomery BOCES District Superintendent Patrick Michel said the B-P middle school’s accountability status is listed as “in need of improvement” in the NYSED’s preliminary report on its 2010-2011 review of public school systems. The final report is scheduled to be released next month.

The new status is the result of the district’s middle school special education students failure to achieve the state’s minimum standards in both math and English language arts (ELA).

Now, B-P officials find themselves facing a daunting challenge — in addition to overcoming a fiscal crisis, the district will have to find a way to dramatically improve the test scores of its middle school special education students.

“We have already started a process of taking a close look at our students with special needs at the middle school to see how it is that we can improve our programs to meet their needs,” said B-P Superintendent Stephen Tomlinson.

In order to be designated “in need of improvement,” the group in question must have failed to meet the minimum standards for the second year in a row, said Michel.

Michel said he is particularly concerned when a school lands on the “in need of improvement” list due to its special education programs because he considers it to be a good indicator that inadequacies may exist in the school as a whole.

Tomlinson also expressed concern over the particular group identified in the report, but his focus was on the fact that the middle school received the designation